


Silver Fever

by ValmureEld (InkSiren)



Series: I Tried Not to Get Into the Witcher and Look Where That Got Me [3]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fever, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Orphans, Other, Platonic Cuddling, Sickfic, Whump, mother hen Nenneke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21751714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: Many years before Ciri, while Geralt lay fevered and shivering in the temple of Melitele, another little girl dares to take shelter under his injured wing.ORNenneke is Tired and cannot keep 6 year old Lyra from sneaking repeatedly into Geralt's sickroom.
Series: I Tried Not to Get Into the Witcher and Look Where That Got Me [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/924813
Comments: 18
Kudos: 306





	Silver Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Hey yo it's only ten days until the Netflix release which means I'm back on my BS thinking about Geralt *constantly* and realized today I've really not written much at all with one of my hands down favorite Witcher characters?? How. How have I written SO MUCH WHUMP and SO LITTLE OF NENNEKE.

It was late on a winter night with flurries building outside when Geralt felt a presence at his side. Bleary, weak with fever, he tensed and cracked open a yellow eye that nearly glowed in the dark, his fingers tightening on the sheets because Nenneke had confiscated his swords. And his knife. In the temple healing wings, there was no need for his instruments of death thank you very much and she wasn’t about to have him stab someone in his delirium.

He’d grumbled for show but knew she was right and had handed his gear over without any real fight. He’d been there often enough that they both knew the ritual. She’d look him over, say something insulting about his ability to take care of himself, and demand his weapons if he was conscious to hand them over. Then he’d grumble (again, if he was conscious. They’d been forced to skip this song and dance a handful of times because Geralt was out cold) and hand things over and sit trying to hide his smile while Nenneke fussed and berated and helped him work his armor off.

He’d had a bad hunting season, and instead of retiring to the keep of Kaer Morhen for the winter he’d decided to work all year round, taking contracts on leshen killing people cutting trees for firewood or nekkers who burrowed before the ground had frozen and dragged beggars and children underground while they scavenged. It had been a harsh winter for everyone, and most of his pay had been in cold lodging and thin broth, but he took what he could and counted the corpses as paying him instead with their harvest.

He’d taken one too many on in his exhaustion this last fight and had bled all down Roach’s side and the temple steps getting to Nenneke for help. That wound in his side had gotten nastily infected despite her best efforts, and he was suffering through a raging fever that none of Nenneke’s herbs could touch.

It was lucky, then, that when the tiny figure trembling at his bedside caught his notice he was in his right mind.

Mostly.

He’d been dreaming about Dandelion and a talking tankard a few seconds before but at least he hadn’t woken up swinging.

Slowly, he raised his head, blinking once in the low light to adjust his vision. He was in a cool room on the outskirts of the healing wing, isolated from the others and exposed to careful amounts of winter air to try and prevent his body from cooking him alive. His breath fogged in an almost dragon-worthy cloud and he shivered, shifting back beneath the blanket a little more. He was laying on his stomach, and pushed gingerly up a little to settle on his forearms. His wound was across the back of his left shoulder and around his ribs, so moving was painful and the injury throbbed.

The child standing in front of him must have been barely six years old.

“Hello,” Geralt said softly, his brow furrowing as he glanced back at the door she’d slipped through. It was slightly ajar, letting much warmer air and the flicker of candle-light through. He had only moonlight to see by, but with his unique eyes it was no trouble to see that the girl was scared, gaunt, and freezing.

“Are you lost?” he asked gently, slowly moving to settle on his good side, both so he didn’t jolt the bad and so he didn’t scare her. “You shouldn’t be here when you’re so cold. Why don’t you go back to the fire?”

The girl continued to stare at him, and even though he swore she hadn’t blinked once, she had begun to silently cry. He frowned, slipping an unsteady hand out of the sheets to touch her icy skin. She started back from his hand, her breathing coming in shudders for a few moments before she slowly, hesitantly reached out and clasped his much larger hand with her small one. Geralt felt his heart swell and he had to swallow the tightness down but he closed his fingers gently on hers. She seemed to be considering moving closer to him when a bustling came down the hall and they both turned their heads to look.

“ _Lyra_!” Nenneke said, in a tone Geralt _soundly_ remembered. “You shouldn’t be here!” she scolded, and Geralt didn’t miss the look she shot him. He let the girl’s hand go, pulling back and settling on his elbow with a wince.

“I wouldn’t hurt her, Nenneke,” he mumbled, casting his eyes down.

“No, of course you wouldn’t, Geralt. Not on purpose,” she said, picking the girl up and settling her on her hip. Lyra looked like she was about to cry some more, and quickly hid her face in Nenneke’s shoulder. “But if you did hurt her I would never forgive myself and neither would you. And I’m not letting either of you suffer like that.”

Geralt frowned at the girl as Nenneke hushed and swayed with her, her demeanor distracted. She reached out her free hand, cupping Geralt’s cheek and prompting him to tilt his head towards the light.

“Melitele, you’re still burning up. Your eyes are almost embers they’re so bright with fever,” she said, worry seating itself firmly between her brows as she sat on the edge of his bed. Her hand dropped to his throat and he let her, swallowing wearily as she gauged his pulse. “And your heart is still too fast. How do you feel?” she asked after a moment, returning her free hand to Lyra so she could rub her back. The girl was still trembling, but Geralt didn’t think it was from cold anymore.

“Sick,” he admitted wearily. “I think the dressings need to be changed,” he added with an apologetic tone. “Again.”

Nenneke nodded and sighed. “Very well, I’ll get one of the girls to come aid you. Hopefully we won’t have to do another flush.”

Geralt paled at the thought. He hoped they didn’t too. He’d already been through two rounds of splitting stitches, flushing the wound, and trying again. His skin was as medically close to mangled as it could be without having been chewed on.

He nodded to the girl, shivering as he pulled the blankets back up over his bare shoulders. “Where did she come from?”

A dark look crossed Nenneke’s face and she pressed her lips together. “Where do you think?”

“War...or starvation?”

She met his eyes. “Does it matter?”

“No,” he sighed, his breath fogging up the space again. “It doesn’t.”

Nenneke watched him with a worried expression for a few moments before reaching out to card back his white hair. Carefully, she shifted Lyra and bent to kiss his temple.

“Try to sleep.”

“What about her?” he asked.

“She’s….underfed and takes cold easily. We’ve been having her sleep with one of the priestesses every night to help comfort her and provide body warmth but…” she shrugged helplessly. “The girl is sensitive to sound. It’s barely above freezing in your sickroom but it is a redeemed mortuary and so very quiet.”

Geralt blinked, then cracked half of a tired smile. “You put me in the morgue?”

“Redeemed,” she repeated firmly, standing. “And don’t you go turning it back to its original purpose or I will be very cross with you.”

“Seems like you’re cross with me anyway,” he said as she headed towards the door.

“Oh, trust me Geralt, you’ve never seen me truly angry with you.”

He smiled wider and lay his head down as she shut the door.

The next night, Lyra was at his bed again like a shadow.

He’d been deeply grasped by the fever for three days, and Nennke had taken to fetching him icicles to eat. It helped with dehydration and kept his body from that edge it kept pushing towards.

“Ploughing witchers,” she’d muttered while checking him over earlier. “In their infinite wisdom they’ve overdone your metabolic threshold and managed no new ways to protect you. Your body literally cannot stop itself trying to burn to nothing as long as the infection clings on. I’m afraid the only way to preserve you is to keep you nearly on ice. If it climbs any higher….we will need to bury you,” she warned.

Geralt couldn’t even make jokes that time. The thought of being buried in the snow wasn’t much above the thought of them just letting him sit in his grave until the fever did him in.

When he recognized the pale little shadow standing at his side, Geralt picked his head up again, frowning in sympathy at her. “Hey, Lyra. Too loud in there, huh?” he asked. To his surprise, the little girl nodded, casing her eyes down at the floor.

“I know what that’s like,” he said, slowly shifting to sit up and fold his legs, the blanket across his shoulders. He considered her for a moment, glancing down the hall and focusing his hearing to guess how much time he had before Nenneke swept the girl up again.

So far, there was no sign of the priestess so Geralt sighed, shivering and clenching his teeth as he opened the blanket. She took the silent invitation eagerly and climbed up, sitting without ceremony in his lap. The action startled him a little, but it made it much easier for him to wrap his arms and the blanket around them both and so he let her, feeling that same swelling in his chest as she snuggled into him. It wasn’t long before the fever trembling through his body stopped the shivering in hers.

He rest his chin gently on the top of her head, eyes closing half way as he stared out of the window. He didn’t dare close them completely and fall asleep, not with Lyra nestled into him like a baby bird, but he let his body cycle down a little and fell into a kind of meditative state. He felt Lyra relax against him too, a great sigh leaving her tiny body as tension suddenly let go. He blinked, surprised, unused to being trusted, but as he looked down at her it occurred to him that not only was this the quietest room in the temple, he was the quietest person she could possibly go to for body heat. His heartbeat had gone closer to normal in the past 12 hours and he was breathing very slowly. Unlike a normal person, with his body she had several seconds of warm silence between every heartbeat, and the relief seemed to have put her to sleep.

Geralt hoped it would take Nenneke a while to find them, but he knew it would just be a matter of the priestess realizing Lyra was gone in the first place.

They probably only had a few minutes, but a few was better than none so Geralt closed his eyes and focused on meditation, letting his body slow as much as it could while still so sick.

When he heard Nenneke’s footsteps he flicked his eyes back open, staring right into the hall where he knew her candelabra would catch the reflective layer like a warning.

“Shhh,” he said when she was close enough. “Girl’s exhausted.”

Nenneke slowed down, taking in the scene as she slipped through the door and shut it. An expression torn between deep fondness and deep exasperation settled on her face and she set the candelabra on the table by his bed.

“Geralt. She cannot stay with you. You know why.”

“And I can’t leave this room or I’ll burst into flame, so I wasn’t about to walk her back into the temple, was I?” he said evenly, his eyes glittering with amusement.

“Don’t start with the cheek, I’ve had a terrible day,” she scolded, but he knew she didn’t really mean it. Almost like she couldn’t help herself, she reached out to feel his forehead and then the side of his face. “Well, you aren’t worse but I cannot with confidence say you’re any better, either. Maybe we do need to flush the wound again.”

Geralt swallowed back the urge to be sick and shook his head once. “Please...just at least give it till dawn. I can’t take another yet.”

Her eyes were sad, and kind, and she nodded. “Alright, but if it climbs any higher I won’t have a choice.”

He nodded, shuffling his grip and the blankets a little around Lyra.

“She fell asleep almost immediately. Stopped shivering in no time, too.” He glanced at Nenneke, his golden eyes sad. “Doe she have anybody?”

Nenneke sank once again to sit on his bed and shook her head, staring sadly at the small body resting against his sternum. “She barely had anyone to begin with. Her…” she sighed, hands tightening on each other “Her grandfather was her only guardian, Geralt.”

Geralt felt a new pang in his chest. “Oh…”

“And he died because he fed her instead of himself. It eventually proved too much. She was orphaned by the war, the plague, and by the cruelty of indifference. Her father was a slain soldier, her mother passed in one of our own beds, and her grandfather laid his life down for her. He was still...fairly strong too, for his age. He shouldn’t have died. Not for a while. We found her at our door with scraps from their home and his footsteps leading away into the woods. He used the last of his strength to die out of her sight. When we found his body, he was covered in snow.”

Geralt had nothing to say. For a long time, neither of them did.

Then: “Let her stay, Nenneke. I’ll stay awake. I won’t hurt her.”

“Geralt…”

“Just...let her stay. Only until daybreak.”

Nenneke hesitated, her torn expression back.

“She lay her head against my chest and was asleep in moments. Do you have the heart to move her? Because I don’t.”

She smiled ruefully. “Oh come now, Geralt. We both know you’re not near as heartless as you like people to think you are.”

“Nenneke…”

“Alright. But if you start to drift you need to call me. Immediately. I will be only just down this hall and I will hear you.”

“I will.”

“Promise me, Geralt.”

“I promise.”

She surveyed them both for a moment before getting up and stroking his hair back behind his ear. “Alright.” She bent and kissed his brow, then the top of Lyra’s head, barely peeking out from between his chest and the blankets.

Geralt settled back and Nenneke closed the door. He blinked once, turned his tired eyes up to look at the crescent moon, and then meant to blink again...and fell asleep instead.

The next time he opened his eyes it was to morning sunlight and a Nenneke that was trying very hard to look stern.

“You, Geralt, are a liar.”

He shifted, winced, then realized there was a heavy weight still tucked into his body. He looked down to see that he’d fallen asleep cuddled against the headboard holding Lyra, who was still quiet and breathing softly.

“Oh.” his brow furrowed. “Sorry?” He winced as he tried to sit up without jostling her, his spine aching from the awkward position he’d been sleeping in.

“However, you are a liar with a broken fever, so thank Melitele for small miracles,” she added, taking his wrist in hand. “And, it seems your heart has finally remembered its unique pace. You are fortunate, Geralt, to have a body of iron. For a while I feared I’d not be able to pull you back from this one.”

“But you did,” he said, feeling Lyra stir sleepily and blink.

“Yes,” Nenneke said softly, touching the girl’s head. “We did.”

**Author's Note:**

> Nenneke's sass alone is reason enough to read the books let's be honest here. The 'body of iron' line is from the Polish TV show where Nenneke strokes his hair back, takes his pulse, and tells him he has a body of iron after he nearly dies of...I think infection. Naturally I really enjoyed that episode.


End file.
